Earth moving machines known in the art are used for digging into the earth or rock and moving loosened work material from one place to another at a worksite. The machines and equipment include articulating mechanical arms or other types of linkages for manipulating one or more implements of the machine. The linkages are capable of raising, lowering and rotating the implements to engage the ground or other work material in a desired manner. In the earth moving applications, the implements of the machines or other equipment may be buckets provided with a beveled lip or blade on a base edge for moving or excavating dirt or other types of work material. In other applications, implements can include rippers, blades, thumbs and the like that dig into the work material.
To facilitate the earth moving process, and to prolong the useful life of buckets and similar implements, a plurality of tooth assemblies may be spaced along the material engaging edge of the implement and attached to the surface of the implement. The tooth assemblies project forward from the material engaging edge as a first point of contact and penetration with work material, and to reduce the amount of wear of the material engaging edge. With this arrangement, the tooth assemblies are subjected to the wear and breakage caused by repetitive engagement with the work material. Eventually, the tooth assemblies must be replaced, but the implement remains usable through multiple cycles of replacement tooth assemblies. Other types of GETs may be attached to buckets or other implements at points where the most wear is expected to occur, such as edge protectors, corner guards, cutting edges and the like.
In many implementations, installation and replacement of the tooth assemblies may be facilitated by providing the tooth assemblies as a two-part system. The system may include an adapter that is attached to the material engaging edge of the implement, a ground-engaging tip configured to be attached to the adapter, and a retention mechanism securing the tip to the adapter during use. The adapter may be welded, bolted or otherwise secured to the base edge, and then the tip may be attached to the adapter and held in place by the retention mechanism. The tip endures the majority of the impact and abrasion caused by engagement with the work material, and wears down more quickly and breaks more frequently than the adapter. The point at a tip is worn down to the point that its useful life is exhausted and the tip should be replaced may be known in the abstract, but it may be difficult to determine in the field that the tip has reached that point.
One example of a strategy for monitoring the wear on a ground engaging tip is illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. Appl. Publ. No. 2015/0149049 A1 to Bewley et al. The Bewley et al. publication discloses a process and tool for monitoring the status, health, and performance of wear parts used on earth working equipment. In one embodiment, a monitoring system has one or more electronic sensors to determine a current length of a wear member on an edge of a bucket. The monitoring system is installed on a bridge or top of the bucket, and electronic sensors have a clear line of sight to the wear members during use. Features may be incorporated onto the wear member to aid in determining the degree the wear member has been worn. The wear member may contain multiple features along the length of the expected wear profile so that as the wear member wears, the monitoring system is able to detect the number of features remaining on the wear member.